The Northern Storm
by RachelBayesian
Summary: For fans who wanted more after the show... Eleven years after the defeat of Daenerys Targaryen, winter has come again and Sansa rules the North. But when events in the south threaten her supply of grain and the independence of her realm, she use her wits, charm, and instincts to find allies-fast. A story of secrets, love, lust, betrayal, and the architecture of power.
1. Chapter 1

Sansa Stark, Queen of the North, Lady of Winterfell.

She'd ruled her independent realm for eleven years since the death of Daenerys Targaryen. The last three of those had been winter.

Her maester was late with reports on their grain stores, so she walked the high battlement by the central keep alone. It was easy to enjoy her solitude standing on the Winterfell battlements and looking across the winter landscape. A blacksmith's hammer sounded behind her, but outside the castle all was silent and austere. Fresh powder snow, fluffy and white as goosedown, covered the cleared land around the castle, and around that were the tall, dark-green trees of the wood where her father had once hunted.

To the forest's edge came a deer with brown fur and white spots and long, felt-covered antlers. It was far from Sansa, but her eyes were sharp and the air was wonderfully clear. The deer nosed around by the base of the trees for something to eat. It did not look hungry. Rather, it moved slowly, peacefully—happily, Sansa thought.

The deer froze in place and raised its head. It turned its long face left and right, pointing its ears towards some sound. For ten seconds, it made no move.

A wolf's howl sounded. The deer darted out of the woods and into the cleared land around the castle.

Sansa's throat tightened in fear.

At the same time, she knew it was irrational and childish to react in such a way. She'd seen things so much worse than a deer getting killed—in King's Landing under Joffrey, in Winterfell married to Ramsay. She'd even seen barbaric things here as Queen. For sometimes in the vastness of the half-wild North, men killed each other or tortured their wives and children for no reason at all, and it was up to her be the law and administer punishment.

A wolf dashed out into the meadow behind the deer, making the deer turn and dash toward a small hillock about ten feet high. The deer ran far faster than the wolf, yet somehow Sansa knew it was doomed. Her suspicion was confirmed when a second wolf, smaller but faster than the first, darted out from behind the hill and caused the deer to change course back into the forest.

The two wolves chased the deer into the trees, out of Sansa's view.

Her emotional reaction to the deer's impending death passed. Such was the way of the world. She'd eaten venison not more than a week ago and she'd eat it again if the hunters brought it back.

Chains clinked on the stone staircase behind her. She turned and saw Maester Llewylyn clamber onto the stairs with a new piece of parchment in hand. He was scarcely over thirty, close in age to Sansa herself at this point, but his back already crooked at the top from poring over so many books.

She asked him about his journey, for she always tried to appear polite and concerned about her subordinates, and then got down to the real business.

"Shall we discuss the grain report, then?" said Sansa, stepping from the battlement into an small office by the great hall where she talked over the most serious realm business.

Maester Llewylyn followed her in and, once inside, plucked a roll of white parchment from the capacious pocket of his maester's robe. He unfurled it and handed it to Sansa. It was a list of all the keeps and larger settlements in the North, how much grain they currently had, and their total population.

Maester Llewylyn pointed to a few rows marked with red crosses. "There's been an issue along the coast. Here, here, here, and here. There was that odd thaw about six weeks back." He raised his eyes and looked hopeful and oddly young for a moment. "Sign of an early Spring, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Sansa, not so optimistic. "Perhaps not."

"In any case, it appears that the early thaw let some rot into their grain stores. At one of the keeps, they ate it anyway, thinking it might harm children or the elderly but not healthy adults. They all went insane for a few days. Said they saw visions or heard demons. Bad grain can do that, it seems. But after that, all the keeps by the ocean, six of them, burned every bit of moldy grain they had. Half their stores in some cases."

"Half?" said Sansa, raising both brows and rescanning the relevant rows on the parchment.

There was no graver subject in winter than grain. When supplies ran even a little low, people worried. Add that worry on top of years of five-hour days and nights so cold they made the eyelids freeze together for a split-second when someone blinked, and people got unruly. Vicious, even. If it came to actual hunger at that point, the whole kingdom could rise in revolt against anyone and everyone.

Sansa remembered one such occurrence from her childhood, when a remote keep ran out of grain. She hadn't been there, of course, but had overheard her mother and father speaking of it in low, tense voices.

She must've been only three or four. It was one of her earliest memories. Mom had asked Dad whether they'd had a raven from Stonewood by the Wall yet. He'd said no and told Catelyn that it was nothing to worry about. Likely their raven had just gotten sick or struck down by wind. Still, he sent an expedition to check.

That expedition took one-hundred sixty days to march through the snow to Stonewood by the Wall, check on the inhabitants, and march back.

All they'd found were burned-out ruins and cracked bones with all meat chawed off. Nobody knew if the locals had eaten each other in starvation or if the wildlings had come in and started killing and eating. Then one old woman whom Lady Stark knew had said there was no difference. Cold and hunger and endless long nights turned even the noblest wild.

When winter arrived during Sansa's reign, she asked about those events. Apparently, all that had happened at Stonewood years ago was bandits getting the grain shipments and a single lost raven. That was all it took to turn her people to savages who would crack the bones of their sons and daughters to suck out the marrow.

Sansa turned to Maester Llewylyn, having made a quick decision about the shortage of grain along the coast.

"Restock them from here," said Sansa. "Give them plenty of grain. Ten percent more than they need to keep them content."

"That will leave the central store at Winterfell with only a seven-month supply," said Measter Llewylyn. "Winter could be over in two or three months… or five years. Of course we can restock, but restocking would take-"

"I know how long it will take," said Sansa. "We've got enough. We'll ration if it comes to it. I'll send a raven south for more grain."

Maester Llewylyn blinked at her a few hard times. She'd learned that this was the closest he came to expressing disagreement. "Yes, but if something goes wrong during restocking, or if the southern kingdoms have raised their prices-"

"My brother is the King of the Six Kingdoms and can see into the future." Sansa smiled at Llewylyn, finding his doubt cute. "We'll get our grain in time—and if we don't, he'll see that we won't and arrange for it."

"Yes, very well. Shall I send a raven at once?"

"I'll write the message myself," said Sansa. "Must talk to my little brother, you know."

She excused Maester Llewylyn, sat at the table in the study, and dipped her pen to write. One of the assistants would take the large sheet she wrote on now and copy it in tiny letters onto the little scrolls that went round the raven's feet.

Sansa asked Bran briefly how he was doing. There was no need send news of Winterfell; he'd use his magic to see it himself if he wanted. Then she politely requested more grain from him at the previously agreed-upon price.

It was good having one's brother for a King but being Queen of one's own kingdom. She got help and guidance whenever she needed it—guidance being partiuclarly nice from someone who could see all places and times. Trade agreements with the Six Kingdoms were particularly easy. There was no negotiation, since Bran already knew how everything would go.

He always wrote a little something back, though his thoughts were so etherial and distant that his replies seldom made much sense.

Summoning one of the assistants, she sent off the message and went on to other realm business.

After two weeks, Sansa's reply came. It was even curter than normal:

**Your grain will come in time. You will have far more than you requested. Love, Bran**.

The last line made Sansa jump. Bran never expressed such emotion in his letters. She didn't, either. Though they were brother and sister, truth be told, they had not seen each other face-to-face in years and had never been close.

The next day she received another message from King's Landing that revealed why he'd ended his message in that way. It was not from Bran, nor from any of her usual contacts in the Red Keep. Rather, it came from the capital's message service that sent critical announcements to all cities and large keeps throughout the world.

This second message said that Brandon Stark, Son of Eddard Stark of Winterfell, The Three-Eyed Raven, King of the Six Kingdoms, leader of that realm through eleven prosperous and peaceful years of rebuilding after numerous wars, was dead.

Sansa gasped in shock. She pressed one hand to her sternum and leaned far back in her chair. Her heart had frozen in her chest; her lungs would not draw breath. Her brother, her little brother Bran who she'd known all his life, who she'd cradled when he was an infant…

Gone.

Then fear struck through her shock: How could a man who could see the future, would knew all places and times, have died so young?

Her mouth went dry as bone. She called in Maester Llewylyn, bid him write to King's Landing to check on the grain shipments, and then went to her private chambers to mourn.

The next day, Sansa received another raven. The note on its ankle described how her brother died.

**To Sansa Stark, Queen of the North, first of her Name:**

**My deepest sympathies for the loss of your dear brother. I am sure, having experienced the vicissitudes you have in your life, that you are suspicious of what could cause the death of a man like your brother. **

**Let me assure you that I do not feel or suspect foul play was involved. I hope you will believe this account coming from me—I do not know how our past relations have left your level of trust.**

**Bran said to me two nights ago, just before he went to sleep, "I will die tomorrow night." I asked him who would dare try and how could he not prevent it if he could see it coming. He said that it was no one, and prevention was impossible. He told me that a piece of blood had hardened inside the veins of his unused, withered legs. This clot would break free and travel to his brain where it would cause him to die. It would be a painless and easy death.**

**I told the maesters. They went to move him and massage his legs to stop what he'd described. Whether this broke the clot in his legs free and so caused Bran's vision to come true, or whether nothing at all could have prevented it, I do not know. **

**His passing was peaceful. He died in his sleep. The maesters have inspected him and say that his predicted cause of death appears accurate to the highest degree.**

**I feel for your loss deeply, Sansa. I realize that pain must fill your memories of our time together, as it was such a horrible period in your life. But you have my deepest condolences. **

**Regrettably, the grain you requested was not shipped before your brother's passing. The master of coin, Bron of Highgarden, declared after Bran's passing that the prices you paid were overly favorable due to your kinship with the king and unfair to others in the kingdom. Bron refuses to send grain until new negotiations are made. I will do what I can to get some smaller amount of grain moving to your people as a holdover until a new deal is struck, as I know how hard winter can be so far north. However, I cannot guarantee much.**

**There will also be a vote to select the new king. You are highly respected in the capital, and though you receive no vote, your influence and guidance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.**

**Therefore, to witness the choosing of a new king and to negotiate with the master of coin, I feel that a trip to King's Landing for your advisors or even yourself would be prudent.**

**Let me again express my deepest condolences. Your brother restored the Six Kingdoms to health after the ravages of so many wars. No other could be so wise or farsighted. He will be gravely missed.**

**I assume you will wish to inter him in your family vault, and I wait only for confirmation to send his remains to Winterfell.**

**In deepest sympathy,**

**Tyrion Lannister**

**Hand of the Former King and Pro-Tempore Regent of the Six Kingdoms**

She replied to agree that Bran's remains should be sent north. The next day, she set out for King's Landing.


	2. Chapter 2

Her advisors and household management worked out a schedule for reaching King's Landing. Sansa and her queenly escort of servants, guards, and advisors would take seven weeks to get there from Winterfell, which would give Sansa ten days before the new king was formally chosen to strike trade deals, gather intelligence, and perhaps forge alliances in backroom meetings.

However, it was an unspoken but accepted truth that such time estimates for travel were always best-case scenarios. Realistically, they'd lose a few days along the way.

The first and best leg of the trip, six days long, was in a sleigh over smooth fields of snow. The sleigh glided along, and they covered great distances, but since it was so smooth and efficient, that part of the trip ended soon. Further south, the snows thinned and the road climbed into the hills, so sleighs would not serve. Sansa got into a four-horse carriage, and the rougher part of the journey began.

The dirt roads were covered in deep ruts and potholes, all of which were frozen rock hard. The carriage wheels would catch in the ruts with a great creaking sound and the whole carriage would stop hard, sending Sansa leaning over. Then men would groan and push on the carriage back while the driver whipped the horses, and the whole thing would lurch back and forth until it got free from the pothole or rut. The endless lurching made people throw up, stinking up the carriage interior.

After the first such day, Sansa decreed that no one in her carriage would eat breakfast, though she was not so dumb as to lay such a harsh command on her servants outright. Rather, she encouraged them to eliminate breakfast in order to achieve more graceful figures for their entrance into King's Landing.

On just the third day in the big carriage, a horse cried out in pain. It had stepped in some hole and broken its leg. Sansa got out of the carriage to look and found them finishing the beast off. The men looked downright happy as they cut its neck. She thought at first that they were happy to see their queen out and walking around; later she learned that it was because they were looking forward to horse stew that night.

A wheel broke on the fourth day, and another horse and a wheel both went down on the seventh. On the ninth, a snowstorm blocked halted them for seven hours, and on the tenth, Sansa got to ride in the sleigh again, which felt like flying on a smooth cloud after being in the creaky, lurching carriage.

Days were only six hours long at that latitude, though they were getting longer as they continued south. Still, they had to move through part of the night by torchlight to make reasonable progress toward King's Landing. On the eleventh day, Sansa was back in the carriage, and a couple nights later, another horse broke its leg on the dark road.

Good thing they'd brought plenty of horses.

Such was always how such trips went, save for days in either late spring or early fall when it had not rained for a few weeks and everything was dry. Sansa lost a day here and there, and it started to look that they'd hardly make it to King's landing with more than a few days to spare.

Along the way, Sansa slept in the keeps of her various lords and vassals. Some of the lords were poor, and though they gave Sansa their best rooms, the beds were lumpy and the blankets smelled of livestock and old beer. She longed at those times to stay in the inns that merchants preferred, but such was unacceptable for a queen. She could not insult her vassals by refusing their hospitality, and she knew that those lesser lords would tell their children about hosting the Queen of the North for generations to come.

Her grief for Bran came to her now and then through the journey's first week or so, though it was not so heart-rending as many sister's would be for a brother. She'd never been close to Bran, really. He'd been an adventurous but aloof boy when they were both children, one to run and climb and explore rather than sit and talk. Then she'd gone off to King's Landing with her father, and so many horrible years passed.

When they came back together after so many years, little Bran was no more: he was the Three-Eyed Raven. He knew all the answers, but this foresight robbed him of humanity. He was beyond uncertainty, fear, and excitement. His thoughts were only prophecies and histories. His deep voice haunted her, and the sentences he uttered were hopelessly remote and strange, like statements from a book that had been written at the end of time.

How could anyone relate to a being like that? Love them, cherish them, have a connection?

So Sansa did not cry for the Three-Eyed Raven. Rather, she cried because she felt guilty for never knowing her own brother and for being denied any chance to ever know him more. She cried hardest when thinking of how Bran looked as a child – his long hair, his bright eyes, his hands grabbing so energetically and eagerly on the castle's high parapets. She recalled her father's voice chastising Bran, and then she cried a bit for them both.

However, these tears were few, and within a week of starting her journey, her grief for Bran had passed. From that point on, the fate of her Kingdom and of the Six Kingdoms to the south worried her more.

The fact was, she'd never fought a war to break free from the other kingdoms. From her readings of history over the years, that seemed to be required to gain independence.

It was easy to see how she'd gotten away with it. No one had wanted a war right after Daenerys Targaryen and the Night King devastated the land. So at the council to decide on the governance of Westeros after Daenerys was killed, everyone there had acquiesced to letting the North leave. Each kingdom had been too depleted of men and resources to contest anything then.

That had changed; Bran had rebuilt the Six Kingdoms well. No longer was the realm on the edge of chaos and starvation. Now, a new generation of boys had turned to men, and they would be prime fighting age, with a few grizzled veterans from the prior wars to train and lead them. If the new king or queen wanted to shore up their support, centralize power, and unify the Six Kingdoms more than ever, they might organize all those men into armies and declare war on an external enemy. For creating an external enemy seemed, again from Sansa's readings of history, one of the most common ways to unify a large and diverse realm.

However, a war was ultimately unlikely. More probable was using the threat of war to gain concessions from the North. Or, likelier still, the new monarch might raise prices on everything the Six Kingdoms sold to the North—which was nearly everything besides timber, furs, fish, and wool.

Sansa kept well-read on the situation in King's Landing and knew who the most likely candidates for the throne were. By far the most likely was Bronn of Highgarden. He'd already been Master of Coin and was an experienced military leader; more than that, in his rise from assassin to commander to high lord, he'd shown incredible ambition.

Bronn would be old now—she'd have to get her maesters to check, but he was around fifty when she'd last seen him in King's Landing eleven years ago. Still, plenty of leaders ruled into their sixties. Tywin Lannister had done a fine job of it. So had Olenna Tyrell.

Sansa had heard that Bronn now walked with a limp due to some illness she didn't quite understand, and that his hair was all white and mostly fallen out. But poor health and old age would not stop a man of that ambition. With the wealth he commanded and the fact that he'd already worked with many of the realm's most powerful people, he was obviously most likely to be the next king. In fact, his low birth and coarse manners were the only reason his election was not a foregone conclusion.

Sansa recalled with a giggle how her uncle Edmure Tully had nominated himself when Daenerys died; he might try something similarly silly this time around, but he was not a serious contender for the throne.

She knew who she'd vote for if she could: Tyrion Lannister. From all accounts, he had been an excellent Hand of the King under Bran. Some even said it was his administrative skill and diligence that had rebuilt the Six Kingdoms as much as Bran's foresight. He had good character, showing this in how he'd stayed respectfully back from her during their arranged marriage. He was entering the mellower part of middle age and could rule for a few good decades before they'd have to repeat this voting procedure.

Tyrion had no chance of winning, however. The other lords did not like him and had a dozen reasons why: He flouted decorum, rank, respect, and tradition; he kept whores in the Tower of the Hand; he got too drunk at royal events; he was short and ugly; he was a Lannister; he'd served the Dragon Queen; he'd been friends with the Spider. And perhaps the biggest reason of all: He was smarter and more educated than nearly anyone outside the Citadel and knew it—and sometimes, he rubbed it in the faces of the other lords.

On top of all that, he'd served so many different monarchs that his loyalty seemed quite in question. There were even those who still whispered that he'd poisoned his own nephew. Bran had trusted Tyrion because Bran could see the past and knew Tyrion didn't do it, but no one else would trust the Imp.

No, Tyrion had no chance at all.

Not that Sansa could vote or nominate anyone. Instead, they'd talk to each other behind closed doors. She'd be in those discussions, and that might be where things really got decided. Some would seek her influence; some might seek her counsel; some would offer her gifts or offer their vote in exchange for the right price or alliance. And if she could stumble upon the correct secrets and strategies in her time there, she might pull strings and force a few of them to vote the way she wished.

Littlefinger had been an excellent teacher about such matters. She almost missed him sometimes. His shrewd maxims about how to play the game of power would float into her mind in tricky situations and guide her through troublesome moments. If he'd failed to outwit her at the end, it was only due to how well he'd taught her, or perhaps due to some slip of his mind—everyone got old, after all.

Over the course of her journey, Sansa thought about all this a great deal. Of course, she was reading raven messages from Winterfell in every town she passed, for she still had to make decisions and rule her northern kingdom while on the road. Some messages received immediate replies; for more difficult choices, she would contemplate them on the road and send a response back in the next town or large keep they passed through.

The journey was horribly long: Two months on the road, ten or more hours a day in the carriage. Her moods changed through it all, as people's moods do, and she still found time to admire the scenery.

Many parts of her northern realm were beautiful. Her carriage rolled through silent forests with giant trees older than Winterfell's foundations and taller than its highest towers. They climbed winding roads into the hills, with boulders and exposed rock on both sides looking gray and picturesque against the white snow. Sometimes they'd come around a bend on a hilly road, and a valley opened below them. In its center would be villages of stone houses with steep-eaved slate roofs to keep off the heavy snows. They passed deer grazing and lumberjacks singing ancient local songs while they worked. In one valley was a long lake where they caught huge fish and carved their bones into tiny shapes of ships and wild beasts.

Here and there were castles, some of them built within the past few generations and looking impressive but lonely amidst the snow-covered vastness; other castles were half-ruined heaps of stones that could've predated Aegon's Conquest by centuries.

Now and then they'd pass a humble house by the road. These places warmed Sansa's heart and made her long for a simpler life, with their lanterns in the window, their rustic rooms, and their scent of baking bread.

The people in those houses and castles and villages trusted her as their ruler. Did they know they'd have no grain for the crusts of their wholesome meat pies if she didn't make the right deals down south?

Yet Sansa was confident. She'd do anything and everything to get that grain. How far she'd have to go, she'd no clue, but Bran had known she'd get it and sent her that message of confirmation despite knowing he'd die the next day.

The days grew longer as the carriage got further south, and their speed increased. The winter landscape of white snow and green pines and silent meadows stretching powder-covered to the horizon slowly turned to the uglier landscapes of the Six Kingdoms. Here the snow had melted and refrozen a few times, so instead of white it was gray-brown and deformed into various shapes and textures—rough and jagged; smooth as glass; blocky and heavy; drooping down off the side of a rock in long icicles and forming frozen puddles at the bottom. Farther south still they passed grain fields frozen hard and with snow only in the long unused furrows. It was an ugly place that would turn green and smell of fresh flowers and tender green leaves when summer came.

Whenever that would be.

When Sansa was over halfway to King's Landing and had passed out of the North, she received a message she found quite curious. It said that none other than her cousin, Robin Arryn of the Vale, would run for king.

This information so puzzled her that she wondered if it were mistake. Robin was a spoiled, lazy, and somewhat foolish boy—or no, he was a man now, not much younger than herself. But his intellect and emotions seemed to have halted their maturation in his early teens. He'd also shown a streak of cruelty as a child, though admittedly that had not shown up in a while from what she heard.

What made it more ridiculous for Robin to try and be King was that he didn't even rule his own realm. The local power holders in the Vale placated him with hunting, gifts, parties, fine foods, and all manner of frivolous and strange diversions. While he was so distracted, they made all meaningful decisions. For the most part, from what Sansa had heard, Robin cared so little for ruling that he never argued with the suggestions of his advisors and simply agreed to whatever they came to him with.

Sansa wrote an immediate reply to the message questioning the source of such information and sent it at the keep of one of her vassals. On the road the next day, however, she had time to turn it over.

It struck her that electing Robin was brilliant.

He would rule the Six Kingdoms in the same absent-minded, uncaring way he did in the Vale. The other power-holders in the Six Kingdoms would make all the meaningful decisions. They'd retain the effective administrative structure, trade agreements, and infrastructure improvements Tyrion and Bran had brought in.

Most importantly, by voting in Robin as king, they kept out potential tyrants. They ensured this election system and balance of power would continue, and that no power-hungry monarch could abuse their royal powers too much-or establish another dynasty like the Targaryens or the Lannisters.

Yes, if she could vote, she'd vote for Sweet Robin.


	3. Chapter 3

Sansa had to travel through the night for the last week to make it to King's Landing before they'd choose the king.

The carriage was hard to sleep in. The roads, iced over in places and thawed to mud in others, jostled and jogged the carriage at all hours of the night. She'd get no more than an hour or two of sleep at a time before getting jolted awake, either by a bump in the road, or the horses suddenly stopping, or by men grunting and pulling to get the carriage out of the mud.

Sansa finally arrived in King's Landing the day before they'd choose the King.

The carriage was filthy from the trip and unfit for a queen, so they left it outside city walls. She changed into fresh garments she'd saved for just this occasion, as did her various servants, retainers, advisors, and guards. When she finally stepped into the city gates, she was so sleep deprived and thin from the journey that the sunlight made her dizzy.

The crowds woke her. As her entourage made their way to the rebuilt Red Keep, down wide boulevards made possible by the fires of dragons, townsfolk of all stripes thronged the sidewalks and packed onto balconies to see the famous Queen of the North. Some cheered; some jeered; some stared at her and her strange northern entourage. There were merchants and blacksmiths, beggars and butchers, madams and soldiers, shipwrights and chefs, bards and artists, bricklayers and soothsayers, and a thousand others whose trades she could not guess.

She'd not been in such a large city since leaving this one many years ago, after Bran had been chosen king. The sensation of being looked at by so many strangers, tighter-packed than they ever were in the north, flustered her for a few moments. Then she recalled her pride and poise and put her hand high in the air to wave. With a subtle, aristocratic smile and a grace in her whole bearing—holding herself as she'd been taught to do since her childhood—she met the eyes of a few of them in passing.

The effect was immediate. Their skepticism at the Queen of the North, this woman who had so audaciously broken off from the other kingdoms, turned at once to honest curiosity and even joy. Children smiled; men admired; and a few of the women gave her looks of heart-felt respect. They knew how she'd gone through abuse, imprisonment, and hardship and somehow come out with a brother on the throne and a kingdom of her own.

As she closed in on the Red Keep, dark memories crept into her mind. The city had been rebuilt and most of the landmarks were gone, but a few charred buildings called back both specific incidents and more long-term feelings of dread, horror, and endless uncertainty.

She recalled fleeing with the royal entourage during the riots, watching the mob hurl bricks and rotted offal and anything else they had at Joffrey. She'd been scared from all the yelling, being a timid girl raised in the quiet North, but a part of her had wished during those riots that the chaos would break free and wipe the arrogance from Joffrey's face. Then they'd torn her away from the royal guards, and the sense of helplessness and terror that she'd known in the palace at Geoffrey's hand had turned into a storm of raging faces that were more violent yet less cruel.

That was how those days seemed to her now—moments so horrible they seemed unreal and yet the images and sounds and smells were still vivid. It seemed hard to believe, at times, that she'd lived in such a nightmare under Joffrey.

Of course she'd dealt with worse than Joffrey later…

[stop here. below needs work; the gesture and break is not dramatic enough]

She was thinking of this when one of her servants set a firm hand on her shoulder—very firm, so much that it nearly caused Sansa to stumble.

She started to ask what it was, but she saw why at once: They were at a crossroads and another entourage as large as her own was approaching the intersection.

"Who is it?" she asked, wondering whether they were important enough to halt her.

"Tis Gendry Baratheon," whispered her maid in her ear. "Lord of the Stormlands and son of King Robert."

Two tall guards clad in shining plate armor were walking in front, but their broad shields could not hide the powerful and handsome man behind them.

Sansa gasped—Gendry had grown up!

He walked with a relaxed, kindhearted confidence that called to her mind her own father more than the fat old King Robert. His shoulders were wide as his father's had been, though it looked like being a lord had not yet made him so fat. His hair was styled well, rich black and without a single gray hair. His blue eyes in his round, pleasing face seemed the type that any girl would like to be looked at with.

Then she caught a glance of his hands, and a different feeling swept through her—not respect or a reminder of her father, but something deeper inside the lower pits of her body, and far hotter. It was like a squeezing together of her insides and she liked it.

Why did his hands make her feel that way?

They looked strange beside his lordly attire. They were huge, with thick fingers that looked strong enough to crush nuts between them. Burn scars speckled their surface, and thick veins striped their tanned skin in blue. They were coarse, rough hands that betrayed Gendry's bastard roots—and also showed his incredible strength. She'd seen such hands on blacksmiths before, but none that impressed her the way his hands did.

Her eyes wandered up to his face, thinking to see in it now a different side than she'd been interested in before. Her eyes wandered passed his smooth-shaven chin and-

His eyes met hers. A flash of surprise tightened her stomach and her nipples, but it startled Gendry far more. The lord of the Stormlands stumbled forward hard, and his attendants holding him up were the only reason he did not need to see a maester for new teeth. Even through his stumble, he stared steadfastly in Sansa's eyes.

She looked away but still she felt his stare hammering into her. When she raised her face again, Gendry's attendants still held him up, and his eyes and stare had not changed one bit.

For a split second, she wondered why a man would look at her that way—for he was so startled that he could not stand or walk or even move his face!

Then it dawned on her: he was stricken with her. Though a woman her age was considered undesirable and far too old to marry, perhaps her stately beauty had diminished less than she expected.

At that moment, the voice of another man came into her ears, not on the outside but within her mind where she heard things she only remembered or imagined. Littlefinger said to her: _He's one of the most powerful men in the realm. Make him love you. Make him your pawn._

So she walked toward him with her attendants. Gendry straightened himself and cast his eyes to the ground, clearing his throat and rubbing one big hand across his finely embroidered blue shirt. It had his family crest, the stag, stitched in gold thread in intricate detail. He cleared his throat a second time and straightened himself to look right at her.

"Lady San-" he said as she drew close, but his voice leapt and cracked on the second syllable of her given name. "Lady… I mean Lady Stark."

He coughed and glanced to the side.

With that slip, all the attraction she'd felt for him vanished. Instead of a handsome, strong man of lordly rank and bearing, Gendry had changed into a common boy. Sure, they were close to the same age—she did not recall exactly how old Gendry was, but he was older than Arya and not older than Jon, so they had to be close. But something about that lack of composure, that slipping of voice, made the tough and manful light she'd seen him in vanish. She saw only a boy and a bastard—uneducated, awkward, and likely simple.

And she smiled to herself. The cruel manipulator within, that her adolescence in King's Landing and her tutelage under Littlefinger had created, loved what it saw.

"It's so wonderful to see you again, Lord Gen-" she deliberately slipped on his name the same way he'd done to her, to make herself seem kinder and relax him, and to endear herself to him. "I'm sorry. We were just children the last time we met. Look at how we've grown! Lord Baratheon, the years have only made you more handsome."

It was not untrue—he looked good. He'd filled out the wide frame with muscles from good eating and exercise, but had not acquired the beer gut of his father, nor the flushed and ugly complexion of too much drinking. He had lovely tanned skin and his whole being beamed with the health and vigor of a man in the prime of life who lives comfortably.

Still, she felt no attraction for him and saw him only as a tool.

"The same to you," said Gendry, and he made a gallant bow. His lordly posture and bearing were coming back to him. "The Lady of the North's beauty is matched only by the excellence of her rule. They say you've made the North to a prospering kingdom of its own."

"I fear you give me too much credit," she said, feigning ladylike modesty. She'd always been good at that, but the older she got, the more it seemed stupid that a woman should have to kowtow to men in that way. "Rebuilding the kingdom was easy with my brother as king and seer of the future."

"My deepest sympathies," he said.

He grasped her hand and, for reasons she did not know at all, raised it to his lips and kissed it softly. His courtly manners were stiff and unpracticed; truthfully, she found them cute. He was a teddy bear.

Sansa almost blushed. He was trying so hard to be courtly, and that, along with his seeming attraction to her, made him behave both as if condoling her for a loss and courting her.

One of his attendants, a stiff-looking man with a prim shirt and carefully clipped silver hair, whispered in Gendry's ear. A pitiful look of fear washed across Gendry's healthy face, and red color rushed into his tanned cheeks.

"I… many apologies," he said, blinking and swallowing and staring right at the ground. "That was… I… I was not born to this life and sometimes my manners are inappropriate. I cannot… It was terrible of me to kiss your hand when I was offering my condolences about your, your brother, the…"

"The King," she said, smiling to try and ease his awkwardness. The control in this interaction, and therefore the advantage, was clearly all hers. "You can make it up to me, Lord Gendry, by calling on me this evening to discuss the upcoming King's Moot."

"That I shall do," said Gendry with confidence.

The man with silver hair, some courtier of Gendry's, set a soft but commanding hand on Gendry's shoulder. Sansa knew that hand—it was the over-ruling hand of some senior advisor informing their young charge that the current course would not do. Many realms had been ruled not from the throne or with the sword, but with such gentle hands.

"Lord Gendry, have you forgotten your prior engagement to see The Prince of Dorne this evening?" said the courtier.

"I… of course not," said Gendry. He looked at Sansa and she caught a bit of cunning in his eye. "But evenings are long in the winter, and I shall have time to visit both."

"I'm afraid not," said the courtier. "The Prince of Dorne speaks slowly and with care."

"He'll speak faster for me," said Gendry, standing tall over the short courtier. That was the first time in the whole conversation when Sansa saw the force and bearing, and not only the stature, of Robert Baratheon in his son. "I'll see you this evening, Lady Sansa."

"I very much look forward to it."

"And… I'm very sorry for my awkwardness during this entire conversation." He straightened up even more, and looked for a moment as confident as he had when Sansa had seen him walking down the street. "Might I ask how your sister Arya is doing?"

He smiled here, and the attraction Sansa had initially felt for him flashed back for one second. Then she recalled the rumors—that her wild little sister had, on the eve of the Night King's attack, been seen going into the Winterfell's cells with this strapping young man. That would've been ten years ago, and it was only a rumor… though she'd had it from several sources, and with the Night King at the gate, people would not have invented such a silly lie.

"I receive a letter from her every six months or so," said Sansa. "She's off to the south on adventures. She takes care of herself and sends us back treasures now and then."

"I should like to see them some day," said Gendry politely.

"I should greatly enjoy showing them to you."

Gendry's courtier again put his hand on Gendry's shoulder, and this time Gendry did not argue. "I must be on my way, Lady Stark. Good morrow to you."

"And to you, Lord Baratheon."

"Call me Gendry," he said, starting to walk away. "I'm getting used to being a lord, but cannot stand so much formality in every address."

"It would hardly be appropriate," Sansa answered demurely.

Gendry smiled, but the courtier did not look pleased.

"Pleasant morrow," said the courtier, and he pressed gently on Gendry's back to lead the young Lord away.

Sansa had walked only ten more feet with her entourage before the clearing crowd before her revealed an aged but unmistakable figure: Tyrion Lannister.


	4. Chapter 4

**Table of Contents**

Chapter 1

Chapter 4

Time had done the Imp no favors—not that it ever did for wine-swillers who liked whores. His stature was, of course, unmistakable, and he still swaggered with the same half-ironic pride and assertiveness. His eyes gleamed with the intelligence and cunning for which he'd become known.

However, his hair had turned all to silver and even white, save for a few patches of faded yellow lingering asymmetrically in his beard. His gut, rotund from decades of drinking, dangled over his belt halfway to his boots. Wrinkles cut his face, and they combined with the battle scar from nearly two decades ago to make him uglier than ever.

Bran had made others know what a hero Tyrion had been in receiving that scar and saving the city from Stannis, though supposedly many of the commoners did not believe this.

Still, the true slowdown of old age had not yet taken him. Sansa did the math—he'd be about fifty now. Not so very old. His father had been the most powerful man in Westeros at an older age.

Up Tyrion walked, leading his entourage without the slightest look back. There was such a marked difference in his bearing and Gendry's. On the surface, they were tiny and huge, young and old, healthy and sodden with drank. Yet despite this, there could be no doubt of who strode through King's Landing with a more impactful presence: Tyrion. He'd grown up in wealth and power so carried himself with an inborn sense of importance Gendry could imitate but not match. Tyrion also had the gravitas and unshakable poise of someone who has suffered through war, humiliation, and imprisonment and lived to tell about it.

"Not ten minutes in the capital and you've made your first conquest," said the Tyrion. "Impressive, Lady Stark. Not even Aegon the Conqueror could best you for speed."

She laughed as if she didn't know what he was talking about, though of course she did. "Lord Tyrion, I see that time has not diminished your wit and interesting sense of observation."

"Neither has it diminished your modesty," said Lord Tyrion, and she saw then the same smile he'd worn when making such glib comments in the court of King Joffrey all those years ago. "You still the same humble and simple girl, even when you survived torment at the hands of multiple abusive and terrible suitors for many years only to end up with your own Kingdom."

She saw then the layers behind this irony; Tyrion knew perfectly well her modesty was all false and that she knew her own achievement in catching Gendry's eye. More than this, from the glimmer in his eye and the cant to his oversized head, she knew he knew she knew he knew. They were very much on the same page without having said a single word to the effect.

"Do you expect the assembled lords tomorrow to choose a superior ruler for the Kingdom?" she asked, wondering how the Imp might spin this.

"Would you believe that there were whispers that they'd nominate me! Thankfully, no substance to them."

"And why not? You've the stature of a king, and you've protected the kingdoms in many ways and more than once."

"Why not is simple, Lady Stark," said Tyrion, his tone rising in ironic delivery. "Because people don't like me, and I've heard one must be likable to get elected. Though elections don't always work as they should."

This intrigued her. The Imp knew something. She smiled and cocked her head slightly. "Shall we meet later to discuss trade agreements between Casterly Rock and Winterfell, Lord Tyrion?"

"Casterly Rock should like to discuss trade agreements with Winterfell," said Lord Tyrion with an indicative twinkle in his eye. "Though not this evening. I'm much to busy to see you about trade agreements, of course."

"Of course," she said, copying his tone. "I know you're much too busy this evening to see me."

"Much too busy, of course," said Tyrion with a low bow. "I must begone, Lady Stark. Farewell!"

So it was that they arranged their secret meeting in public view. Somehow, they spoke the same language of suggestion and deceit.

An hour after dark, Sansa was pacing the spacious quarters in the Red Keep that had been assigned to her as a visiting monarch and the sister of the dead king. She was not anxious or nervous; rather, she paced because sitting in the carriage for so many weeks had made her back hurt and her neck tense, and walking made it her feel a bit better.

She had a craving then for some kind of exercise. Something warm and active and energetic that would make her sweat a bit, something rhythmic that penetrated deep into her. Something like… dancing, but that was not it. It seemed that if she got whatever it was she craved, her aches and pains would fade away.

Tyrion's messenger was announced, and Sansa could not believe he'd sent for her so early. He must have many people to see tonight indeed. His servant, a plain-faced woman of late middle age named Bethan, told Sansa to leave her own guards and servants behind.

This raised Sansa's suspicion, and she hesitated to follow Bethan. So many people she knew had died in King's Landing, and so many had been tortured… including her.

Bethan repeated to Sansa a joke Tyrion had made in their marriage, one which Sansa remembered. This proved to Sansa she had in fact come straight from Tyrion, and could be trusted well enough.

"Lead the way," said Sansa.

Bethan clasped Sansa's hand. The servant's grip was soft and gentle, the hands of a mother or even a grandmother, but deeper beneath the pads of fat, there was the hidden strength of a life of labor. Bethan led her into a closet and down a servant's staircase hidden in the castle walls. A barrel was rolled quickly to the side at the bottom of this staircase to reveal a trap door, and they descended into the mysterious world of the Red Keep tunnels.

Being in the tunnels excited but scared Sansa. She'd heard so much about them: assassinations and plots arranged through them, her own sister Arya escaping through them, dragon skulls of all sizes lurking in the depths, and also the bodies of those made to disappear in prior regimes.

The vaulted tunnel they were in bore down into the Keep's bowels. The stones became older and more worn the further they went. In places, it smelled of rot; in other places, of clean water dripped on limestone. They went around tight corners, came to intersections of a dozen different paths, went down ladders and up tiny spiral staircases twisted tighter than any Sansa had ever seen. Their breath and footsteps echoed in the quiet dark. It would be an excellent place for an assassin to hide, indeed.

Bethan popped open a trap door and candlelight streamed onto them. Up a ladder they went, and Sansa stood in some room of the Red Keep she'd never seen before. Tyrion was nowhere to be seen.

Sansa started to ask if they'd gotten lost, but Bethan pressed one fingertip over her lips and led Sansa on with a tight hand about the wrist. They went two rooms through the normal, lived-in portion of the Red Keep. Then, behind a tapestry over a false wall, another tunnel opened into further tunnels still.

How Arya had ever escaped through here, Sansa would never know. It was hopelessly complicated.

They passed a row of cells with torture instruments hanging on the walls. Sansa recognized some of them from Ramsay's collection. Horror seized her, fear so strong it made her head airy and light. She paused to lean into the wall. Bethan stopped and fanned Sansa with her two large hands, but after a few seconds of this, she grasped Sansa's wrist again and dragged her onward.

Finally, Sansa and Bethan climbed a long flight of stairs. It went up and up and up. They must've gone deep to warrant so many ascending stairs. Sweat dampened Sansa's undergarments, and her breath came fast and did not feel like it filled her lungs. She'd gotten out of shape sitting inside during the three-year winter.

Just when Sansa could feel a bead of sweat on her forehead drip down, Bethan popped open another door. Out they stepped into Tyrion's bedroom in the Tower of the Hand.

Tyrion caught Sansa's eyes the second she walked in.

"Enjoy the trip?" he asked jauntily, stepping forward with a goblet of wine in his hand. "I always do."

"It was interesting," she said.

"Just 'interesting'? Not a very descriptive word. I find it's a word not-so-interesting people tend to use. So why are you using it?"

Sansa glanced to one side. "The climb up the stairs was difficult, and the tunnels, though fascinating, brought to mind disturbing memories."

"Dark places often lead to dark thoughts," said Tyrion, sipping his wine. "Though of course there's nothing like dark thoughts in the middle of a pristine forest or a sept. I've had plenty in septs. Practically a hobby for me, with all the royal ceremonies and other nonsense I've had to attend."

Tyrion set his wine down and stepped forward contemplatively.

"You never would've set that goblet down before," Sansa joked. "Lord Tyrion, you're getting old."

"I am. Though part of it is that I must sip wine and act genially casual with many others besides you tonight. As I expect you may yourself."

"Not so many," said Sansa.

"Such modesty," said Tyrion, and she did not like that he said that. With that comment, she understood on a deeper level why the other Lords did not like him. Tyrion somehow knew, in his cleverness, that she was modest by habit but did not like being modest, so he was teasing her for it. She could only imagine what all the pompous Lords and merchants in King's Landing must feel when he pricked them in their most sensitive spots.

"I'll get right to it," said Tyrion. "You're meeting Gendry within the next hour, yes?"

Tyrion still knew how to use informants well, she saw. It was not surprising. "That's correct."

"Very well then. It's pretty simple what I want here. You will ask Gendry to vote for my candidate."

She respected his directness. "And your candidate is whom?"

"Robin Arryn."

"An astute choice."

"Glad you like it," said Tyrion. "That should make it much easier for you to ensure Gendry likes it."

Sansa didn't know whether she could even accomplish such a thing. It seemed like a strange thing for him to ask, but she went on with her negotiation.

"To sway a Lord in such a crucial vote—what shall I receive in return?"

"Casterly Rock will offer Winterfell particularly favorable trade terms. We need timber to build new ships. We will supply you with-"

"Gold," said Sansa harshly.

"I was thinking a more direct exchange of goods might result in better rates."

They hashed over the details of the trade arrangement. Sansa got Tyrion to agree to quite a good rate on exchanging timber for new armor for her army; the Lannisters had a few iron mines and could craft fine steel.

"And of course, on top of that, you'll have a very appreciative friend in high places." Tyrion lifted his wine and took a very deliberate sip. He then added, with deliberately strong irony, "Not the highest, of course."

He meant that he'd absolutely be the highest. He was going to be Hand of the King under an absentee monarch.

"It's a good offer," said Sansa. "Though I… You overestimate what I can achieve here. I do not know Gendry well. He's a Lord of one of the Six Kingdoms. I cannot simply push a button on him to make him vote for Robin Arryn."

"More northern modesty from the woman who made the North her own."

Sansa was not in a mood to jest. "I did not get my kingdom by having some kind of special power over men."

"No, you did it by seizing the perfect opportunity, which is more than I'm asking you to do here."

Sansa paced away from him, feeling frustrated. "How do you think this works, exactly? I just smile and then he does what I ask?"

"I did think that was how it works," mused Tyrion with a sly smile, and he finished this thought with a mirthful brow raise and a sip from his cup. "Do not act so astonished, Sansa. The young lord clearly is interested in you. Do your best and use your womanly ways to sway his vote."

Sansa still felt that Tyrion overestimated her. She'd never had the charm of, say, Margaree Tyrell.

She shook her head. "What sort of Lord would get swayed so easily?"

"One who thinks he's doing the right thing," said Tyrion, setting his cup down. "You just need to convince him it's the right choice. The wise choice. The choice that's honest, that's good, that's upright, that will help his people and all people. And if that doesn't work, well, smile at him in a way that makes him feel desired and important, throw out some hints, give a few vague promises you won't keep… or whatever it is women do to get men to do things. I don't know how it works exactly."

It ashamed her, having to resort to such tactics, being asked by Tyrion to use them. What would her father think of his daughter employing such methods? Even if she did stoop to such means—she couldn't achieve what Tyrion asked. Gendry was handsome, rich, and powerful; he'd have better-looking women throwing themselves at his feet daily. She, on the other hand, had not attracted such an important man in years.

It was all frustrating.

"I am a queen," she said to Tyrion coldly, masking the doubt and shame in her heart. "I do not resort to such measures."

Tyrion put out, in a lilting sarcastic voice, "Then don't resort to any measures. Don't lie or make false promises or flatter him or lead him on. Offer him marriage honestly."

Sansa broke into laughter.

"I wasn't entirely joking," said Tyrion, lifting his cup and sipping the wine. "You could do a lot worse. As could he. It's a match made in heaven. The fact that half of the parties involve actually appear to desire the arrangement on a physical or romantic level—that makes it better than nearly all marriages among royalty. Though of course we can't expect it to match the chivalric romance and fervid mutual attraction of our own matrimony."

Sansa laughed again, and Tyrion smiled along with her.

"You sure you don't want any wine?" he said.

"Give me a small cup."

Tyrion set a smaller silver chalice on the table and poured himself. She noticed there were no servants in the room; even Bethan had gone out. Tyrion was being very cautious, indeed.

Sansa sipped the blood-colored wine gratefully. The flavor astounded her—full-bodied, fruity yet astringent and almost having the savor of bloody meat, along with a touch of oranges. It eased away her discomfiture at Tyrion supposing she might do something so base as use her womanly wiles to influence an election.

"What was my brother like as king?" she asked him suddenly.

Tyrion squinted at her and drew his head back a little. His face went horribly wrinkly when he squinted, making him look closer to fifty than forty.

"He was your brother, not mine," said Tyrion.

"They say you worked with him more closely than anyone," said Sansa, taking another hearty sip of wine. A tiny note of sadness came into her voice as she went on. "I realized, on the long trip down here, that I didn't know Bran as a man at all. I remember him as a small boy, but when I saw him when we were both adults, he wasn't… his mind was so changed at that point that I didn't know him. Can anyone know someone like that?"

"I suppose we know each person in a different way than we know all others. The nature of our knowing is as unique as the beings we know." Tyrion shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't intellectualize at a time like this. You must've felt great pain."

"No," admitted Sansa at once. "It was not so bad. You can't feel pain like that for someone you don't know. Of course I was sad. But we've both…"

She couldn't bring herself to say the black words her heart had wanted to let out, which were: We've both seen so much worse than the peaceful death of my brother.

"You want some details of what it was like working with your brother, to ease your feeling of not knowing him." Tyrion adjusted his grip on the wine and set his eyes on the floor, staring into the distance of passed time and memory. "Very well then. He made astute and far-sighted decisions. He listened to logic, and he never lost his temper."

"Because he had no human emotions," said Sansa, a chill going through her. "Not after he came back from north of the Wall."

"He did have emotions," said Tyrion. "He never felt anger nor fear, but he would get sad at times. He'd just gaze off at the sky, and his voice would drop even lower and get slightly uneven. But it was hard to tell, that's true. He didn't smile much. Instead, whenever I made a good joke, he would look at me and say, 'That was funny, Tyrion.' No smile came with that line, though he had a bit more life and gladness in his voice when he said that. The only time he truly smiled was when he was in nature or when he was dreaming—when he was truly dreaming, fully asleep. Never when his eyes would roll back and he'd see his special visions."

Sansa nodded slowly. "Thank you, Lord Tyrion. I shall cherish these memories."

He looked at her over the top of his cup before speaking again. She got the sense he knew she'd said the second part out of politeness or decorum, and not because she was so sentimental as that. Again, she had the eerie sense that Tyrion was too wise, too clever, and could see through her too readily.

"Now that we've got that out of the way," said Tyrion. "Let's get back to our earlier discussion. You and Gendry."


	5. Chapter 5

This sudden topic change from Tyrion caught Sansa off-guard.

"All you have to do," said Tyrion, standing from his chair and walking about the room as if to stretch is legs, "is ask. Just ask Gendry to vote for Robin Arryn in the Great Council meeting tomorrow. Not much to it!"

"I can't," said Sansa. It was much more than a simple request to Gendry that Tyrion wanted. "It's… that type of behavior is unsuitable for a queen."

"Not when she's with a high lord," said Tyrion with a mocking smile. "Then it's 'romantic.'"

Sansa wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Even if I were willing to… to use my… my womanhood in such a way as to influence… Surely you cannot be relying on me to do this in order for Robin to win!"

"Not relying on you, no," said Tyrion. "But when you must make absolutely sure of a win, you stack the odds in your favor as high as you can."

Sansa had thought of how the vote might go during her trip to King's Landing. In fact, Tyrion's position was incredibly strong. His own vote and Robin's were guaranteed, as was the vote of her Uncle Edmure, since he was Robin's uncle too.

"You've said you're having several other such conversations tonight," Sansa said with a nod. "It would seem you've locked up three votes and only require one more to control four out of the seven major houses on the Great Council."

Tyrion shrugged and gave her a knowing, almost cute smile. "Something like that."

"Then I'm sure your other discussions tonight will gain you a better result than this one, and you'll get the ruler you want. As for myself and Gendry—Lord Tyrion, you severely overestimate me. There's nothing I can do."

"I'm afraid you're wrong about that." Tyrion was holding his cup with the tips of his fingers and tilting it slightly forward, the way he did when he was about to make a point. "Ask him, that's what you can do. That's all I need, just an ask."

"Ask and succeed, is what you mean. You won't fulfill the trade deal if I ask and fail."

"I will," said Tyrion. "I surely will. Only, you must seriously ask him and try to persuade him with all your art and skill."

"And then if he fails to act, you'll still go through with the deal? I don't think so."

"A Lannister always pays his debts," said Tyrion with a wry, knowing smile.

"That line has gotten you into a lot of trouble over the years, hasn't it?"

"Gotten me out of a lot, too. I think for the most part I've come out ahead."

"I don't care for the arrangement, in any case. Your terms are too vague. You say I must try my best—how will you know that it's my best? I've been in the North ruling as Queen for a decade. I'm not so charming or persuasive as you imagine."

"From the way Gendry looked at you on the street," said Tyrion, "I didn't think he needed more than a gentle wind to push him into your camp."

"You exaggerate."

"I'm not. Anyone can recognize a look like that. The whole city is already gossiping about it."

She dismissed this idea with a light laugh. "They are not!"

"They are. Just from that look, and I suppose from how dashing yet bashful Gendry acted, they think you two are destined."

"Did I look that way?" she asked, confused. "Like I was smitten with him?"

"No, but commoners and nobles alike assume you are. For a single woman your age to not appreciate the attentions of a Lord of the Six Kingdoms—and one so nice as Gendry—they cannot imagine it. They assume you are overjoyed with your good fortune in winning his affections, and were simply being coy in not showing it. Do you know they have a name for you two as a couple already?"

"Don't be ridiculous!"

"I'd never be ridiculous," said Tyrion. He was wearing that slightly arrogant half-smile he always had when he was being clever and winning at something. "It's true, they've named you two as a couple. In the street gossip of King's Landing, you two are being called 'The Northern Storm.'"

"Clever," Sansa had to admit. "I'd rather like it… if it weren't about me!"

"Make it about you. Why not?"

Sansa shook her head, feeling her father would not support such an action. Pretending affections and teasing marriage, in order to manipulate someone and secure a trade deal? She could see Lord Eddard Stark giving her that look of disapproving fatherhood: eyes narrowed, mouth in a slight frown, hand on his waist.

"If I ask him for this and he does it…" said Sansa. "I should think if everything you say is true, he'd come court me afterward."

Tyrion gave her his craftiest smile. "And imagine what you can ask him for then."

She felt a dark sense of power slice through her. It was like a hook moving deep through her muscles, but instead of hurting, it made her feel strong, safe, and cunning. It was an intoxicating feeling.

She saw in her mind the face of another older man, who had tutored her in the game of power far more than the honorable Eddard Stark… and he was smiling at her, nodding, talking in that strange growly voice to goad her on.

"I'll do it," she said, standing up.

"Excellent!" said Tyrion, and they clanked their silver cups of fine wine together and drank.

"One more thing," said Sansa, setting her empty cup on the table. "You said I'd have a friend in the capital."

"Indeed."

"Then what I would ask, in your friendship—I want to know what you know. I'd like to share in your information that you gather so well."

Tyrion laughed. "I'm afraid I don't know anything. And if I did… well, we've already made the deal, and you're asking for too much."

"How about just anything you pick up on with regards to my kingdom? Anything urgent about the North? Can you give me that, as part of our deal, if I do get Gendry to do as you say?"

Tyrion looked to one side. It was not the mocking, manipulating face he normally wore in public. It was how he looked when he thought seriously, a face he showed to few. She knew it only from having been his wife.

"Yes, that will be acceptable," said Tyrion after a few seconds of thought. "And now I've other cups of wine to drink with other trading partners."

"As do I."

So Bethan led Sansa back to her chamber. The tunnels seemed far shorter and less mysterious this time, mostly because she was thinking over everything Tyrion had said and wondering what she'd gotten herself into.

Bethan opened the closet door into Sansa's room, and Sansa emerged to find one of her trusted handmaidens from Winterfell waiting with a look of nervous excitement on her face.

"M'lady, Lord Baratheon is here to see you," said the handmaiden.

"I'll receive him in my sitting room," she said, for guest chambers in the Red Keep were sumptuous enough to have multiple rooms.

The handmaiden went to open the door, but Sansa called out with a sharp, "Wait. Get the looking glass."

The handmaiden blushed. "So sorry, M'lady!"

"We've no time for apologies. Get the looking glass."

The servant drew from Sansa's luggage a polished silver mirror. Sansa looked in it and her confidence waned. There were more wrinkles in her forehead than she'd expected; the mere journey from Winterfell had aged her.

She gasped as she saw something more forbidding than the wrinkles: a single gray hair floating out from her temple, long and thin and the color of ash.

Sansa gripped the hair firmly, grit her teeth, and plucked it out.

"I must have a touch of powder on my face," she told the servant. "Just a touch! It must look natural."

"But Lord Baratheon is waiting."

"Good," said Sansa, thinking her handmaiden was not clever. "We'll put the makeup on and take our time. Give him a couple minutes to get nervous, so he's pliable when he comes in."

So they daubed the powder on, and then Sansa took a small glass of strong wine. It would put a bit of color in her cheeks and ease the ache in her back from sitting in that carriage for so long. She couldn't have her back spasming and locking up like an old woman's in front of healthy, young Gendry Baratheon. He likely thought she was just as healthy as himself and not prematurely aged from the stress of running a kingdom.

She tipped the last of the wine down her throat, feeling its acerbity tighten her gums. Her own nerves vanished, for she knew the fate of her free kingdom might depend on the impression she made.

She'd always performed well under pressure.

"Let him in," she said with the calm, queenly voice that her servants found so cold and authoritative.

When the door clicked open, the queenly side of Sansa vanished. She took the air of the demure, stupid girl she'd been fifteen years ago.

"My Lady Stark," said Gendry, stepping confidently into the room. He left his guards outside, and the aide who had set his hand on Gendry's shoulder earlier was gone. Sansa was thankful for this. "I hope that the capital finds you well."

"Better than it found me when I ran into you," she said. She rattled off some details about the journey, as was the polite and expected thing for a Lady to do when welcoming a lord. She then asked about his journey and he answered in the same cold, almost ceremonial way; it seemed his advisors had trained him well enough on the most basic etiquette.

"This Great Council business is such a fuss, isn't it?" she put out after more smalltalk, feigning a young coquette's disinterest. "I hope we shall not have to do it so often. Granted, I can't vote, though I have urgent matters to negotiate here, and of course I'll need to have business dealings with whoever wins."

"Aye. We'll all be needing a talk with our new lord."

"You assume it'll be a man."

"Don't know that any women are running," said Gendry in his rough, direct way that he spoke in when he had to answer questions his advisors hadn't prepared him so directly for. He went to the table and poured himself a big cup of wine, holding it easily in his huge, scarred, strong blacksmith hands.

"Who do you estimate has the best shot?" she asked.

"I know who I like," said Gendry. "Bronn, of course."

Sansa feigned surprise. "Bronn? Are you quite sure? Don't you find him coarse? And greedy? And poorly educated?"

"Aye, like myself, except for the greedy bit. And I don't know that he's greedier than anyone else. He's just more honest about it, and better at it. What's so wrong with that?"

"I just… I do not think… he has no nobility in his nature."

Gendry stared down and gulped his wine. He had a pain on his face as he did this. "Again, neither do I."

"No, no," said Sansa, seeing his self-consciousness of his birth. "You… your father, I can see his nobility in you."

"Can see the king in me, huh?" said Gendry, lifting his face with a confidence in his eyes that Sansa did not quite trust.

"Yes," she said.

"Can you see the whore in me, too?"


	6. Chapter 6

A shock swept through Sansa, feeling like a chilly tightness that gripped her chest. But it passed, and she kept her poise, ready to apologize and abase herself and so win him back over.

However, Gendry beat her to it.

"I'm so sorry, M'lady," said Gendry. His face once again assumed the rather pathetic, ill-at-ease look he'd worn on the street. As he went on, she heard more than ever the voice of a blacksmith's apprentice. "It's… it's the commoner in me that says such things. Doesn't be trustin' all these lordly types like yourself to treat me well, even though most of them mean well—you included. Can't be saying such things in fine company. I'm always making meself look foolish… Many apologies. Many apologies, M'Lady."

He gulped down some wine and refilled his cup. With the speed he drank at, his powerful figure would end up like his father's by the time he hit forty—perhaps by thirty-five.

"You needn't apologize so profusely, My Lord," said Sansa with false meekness. "I… I should've known you were sensitive about such things."

He set the wine down to think—this impressed Sansa. His eyes turned sad and distant, and for a moment, Sansa saw what Arya must have liked in Gendry—a pensive, tender spirit in a brawny body, full of life but beaten up by a harsh world that had seen him captured and used as a political pawn.

"The lords and ladies around me, people who have been raised to refinement for their whole lives," he began, glancing now at the ground, then at Sansa. "People like you, to be honest—I can see it plain as day that they'll never see me as one of them. Can see it from how they straighten their posture when I walk into a room and work so hard to maintain that posture whenever I say something they think is stupid. Even the nicest among them, they think I'm just lucky dimwit and try to steer me like I'm an unclever horse always about to break something."

"I can see the wisdom in you," said Sansa. "You have a genuine and humane understanding of people."

"Aye, that I do. It's easier when you came from the people. Can you really see my father in me?"

Mostly in how fast you drink, thought Sansa. "Yes. You have his confident bearing and his powerful physique."

"That I do, or so they say. Course he was a bastard too, in a way. Descended from bastards of the Targaryens. A lot of the great houses got started like that. Just one tough man who put himself into the right position, and a hundred years later, nobody knew or cared that he'd come from the dirt."

"You are one of those powerful, self-made men," said Sansa.

He laughed and squinted at her. She'd pushed her flattery too far, she saw—he was not so dense as he'd seemed at first.

"No, I got lucky," said Gendry. "Fought in a few battles, didn't' get killed in them, got made a proper lord by the Dragon Queen and then when it was over, people for some reason still accepted the decision she'd made, even though she wasn't the real queen when she made that announcement."

He took a big gulp of wine and went on. "See, the man who did pull himself up and put himself in a high position just by his own cleverness and work-—it's Bronn. That's why I respect him so much. Because he made himself into that, and he tells it like it is. It's him who told me that, that the high houses are just bastards a few generations removed. When he said that, I felt less out of place, at least for a while. He understands people, he understands money, and he understands military matters—what else do you need in a king?"

"Goodness," said Sansa.

Gendry laughed. "I'll take mere decency. Hell, I'll take a king who only wants the kingdom to run smoothly to make himself more powerful, long as he's not killing people to do it. They said you were clever when I told them I was meeting you—don't you know that no good person would ever want to be king?"

Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, "I wanted to be queen. And I made myself one."

She worried she'd showed herself to him too clearly. But his infatuation with her showed itself in smile so unexpectedly warm that it disarmed her.

"Nah, I don't see it," he told her. "No bad in you, I think. Or less than most people. You weren't so power hungry; you wanted independence. You wanted free from the Seven Kingdoms that had brought you and your people so much pain."

She wished she could believe in Gendry's rosy view of her motives. It was half-true, at least.

"Sweet Robin is decent," she said, hoping it was true. He hadn't thrown anyone out the moon door in a good five years from what she'd heard. "He doesn't like war. He's not cruel. He's not greedy in the way Bronn is. He was very close to his mother and has a gentle nature."

Gendry nodded. "Maybe that's true. Is it true, also—my advisor told me this before I came here—that you were to marry Robin Arryn when you were younger?"

This caught Sansa off-guard. Such a match had been no more than mentioned by Aunt Lysa. Gendry's people were thorough in informing their Lord.

"There were many talks of who I was to marry when I was younger," she said. "Myself and Robin made a lot of sense, politically. He was my cousin, and by uniting the bloodlines, our children would inherit both the Vale and the North."

"And they'd have a claim on Riverrun, as well," said Gendry. "Two claims, through both grandmums. It would still be a good match to make, wouldn't it?"

"Politically, yes."

"So why not?"

She met his eyes with the tenderest look she could. It was a look she'd not brought out since becoming queen, a look she'd perfected to draw tenderness from anyone she could when she'd been under Joffrey's thumb, and then Ramsay's. It hurt her to put that look on because it made her recall the constant terror of that time in her life.

So she put on that vulnerable, timid, love-seeking look and said to Gendry,

"I've always wanted to marry for love. Though if it could be a marriage that made sense politically as well, that would be perfect. More than I had dreamed."

Gendry's eyes twinkled with sensitivity, and that made Sansa wince inside with guilt. But she was happy, too, to watch it all work so well.

"I believe in romance, too," said Gendry in a sensitive voice. It should have been romantic to hear, but Sansa only pitied him. With that pity vanished both her respect for Gendry and any trace of attraction she might have for him, but she let none of this show on her face.

"I want to marry someone I love," Gendry went on. "The old men around me, the ones who try to teach me and make sure I don't do anything too stupid, they say I've gotta get married sooner rather than later. Say love doesn't matter, and that love comes and goes but I've got a duty to my people. Been saying it for a good five or six years now. But I haven't met the right woman.

"Also, when I marry the woman I love, I'll only be with them. Won't ever even look at another woman. And for now, well, I'm still liking all the attention that being a lord gets me, to be blunt."

She wondered whether he had any bastards yet, but she said, "I'm sure you'll make whoever it is extremely happy."

"Will I?"

She held her eyes on his and let her own eyes sparkle. "Absolutely. You have a kind heart and so much strength. I can see it in you. And you have such humanity and understanding, as well."

"Aye, and a poor ear for flattery."

He said it with a smile on his face, so that Sansa didn't take his accusation too hard. He didn't show his teeth when he smiled. Probably had bad teeth, being a commoner.

"Why should I vote for your cousin?" asked Gendry. "Why, in what way could he possibly rule better than Bronn?"

"By not ruling," she said. "The new leadership system of the Six Kingdoms, of choosing a king via Great Council, it's still fragile. We don't want someone too powerful or ambitious to take the throne. Bronn won Highgarden by making threats and being ready to carry them out. I think the second he becomes king, he'll set out to reorganize the system in his own favor."

"And get his own descendants on the crown," said Gendry. "They legitimized his son a few months back, you know."

"Did they?" said Sansa, raising both brows—for this was news indeed. "Legitimized—it was not from his marriage?"

"Nope. Some bastard Bronn made at some point. It was your brother that legitimized the boy. Did it personally, given how important Bronn is. You brother looked into the visions and saw something that made him agree to do it. Marcus is the boy's name. Not more than twenty I think."

"So you can see the appeal of Robin Arryn, then," she said, more focused now that Bronn was an even clearer threat. "To maintain this current way of electing kings, of balancing powers."

"Don't see how Robin Arryn does that any better than Bronn. He's married into two of the seven realms and has ties to you, as well. And Bronn's a lot more like me… as is his son. Is it really better to do all this politicking and voting and scheming every time a king dies? I'm no historian, but haven't most kingdoms in history been run by father-son succession?"

"There are cities in Easteros that use other systems. Councils or even elections where every man can vote."

"Aye, but those are just cities, and it's educated city folk who voted. A whole kingdom won't run on that system, especially not one full of farmers and fishermen who can't read. Need strong, consistent authority in charge."

This surprised Sansa; she agreed with much of what he said, and yet she had to find a way to convince him to vote for Sweet Robin.

Gendry's words were too educated for a commoner, she perceived—especially one who had just recently learned to read. He'd heard this from someone else, and would have nothing so clever or wise to say if she pressed the argument further. Yet a position which would refute what Gendry had said and at the same time, get him to choose Sweet Robin—she could not think of that position to put forward to him, nor was she sure it existed.

But she'd win this. Gendry had other weaknesses.

"A shrewd point," she said with a falsely adoring smile. "You have a point—the stability that an inherited monarchy makes has been the foundation of all great Kingdoms and empires. Voting systems have never succeeded at any scale, here or in Easteros for all I know. Do you contemplate political systems often?"

Gendry's composure broke again. He was too easy to abash. He laughed nervously and then drained his cup, refilling a third time. Yes—very much like his father.

"That's what me advisor's said, M'Lady. I've got a good memory for things people say—I guess it's because I couldn't write anything down until a few years ago."

She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. He leapt under her touch, but did not draw away. His eyes glowed, and she knew that he'd believe whatever she said then, though she had to choose the right words.

"Your earlier point, that no good person would want to be King—that was not from your advisor."

"No, M'Lady."

"It was a point as wise as your advisor's, if not more so."

A fire of joy lit Gendry's sensitive eyes—so happy was he just to hear her encouragement. She felt a little guilty, but mostly, she relished her power.

She went on. "And don't you think that a good kind would not necessarily want to be one? Like my brother."

He pondered this in silence a moment. "I'd say that's true. To be honest, I never particularly wanted to be a lord, though I'm enjoying it now."

"I can see you are," she said, thinking that any man would enjoy all the drinking, hunting, and whores. "And in this election of a king—it is Sweet Robin who is less hungry for power. He's scarcely interested in his own realm, and it's only through a group of interested parties who want the best for the kingdom that he's even nominated."

"That may be so," said Gendry. He looked down at her body and licked his lips. Then he blinked a few times, looked away, and gulped his wine, as if ashamed to have let his hunger show. "The thing is, I'll just never trust some highborn who they say throws people through a hole in his castle onto a cliff. Bronn killed, sure—as a soldier. He's a man of the people, and I don't think some highborn Lord can ever know what it's like to be one of us—one of the people, that is. We're just numbers and soldiers to them, or when the people try to change things, then they're just an angry mob—a mob that the lords show their place with pikes, whips, and the gallows."

She saw then that Gendry was not dumb. He was apparently foolish around women whom he liked—which was her, for the moment—and he could not read well, and he was sensitive about his background. But the man had common sense aplenty, and it would not be so easy to sway him with logical arguments.

"Would you trust me?" she said pleadingly, going for the emotional appeal Tyrion had assured her she had. "I'm highborn, but I do prioritize the needs of my people, and I've never seen them merely as a mob or numbers."

"Aye. But you're not Robin Arryn. And you're not in the election."

"But I know from my own experience in ruling the North that Robin Arryn, guided by the right Small Council, would be a good ruler. One free from tyranny, who let each of the Six Kingdoms govern themselves for the most part. As ruler of one of those kingdoms, surely you can see the benefit in that?"

"Aye," said Gendry.

He was looking at her oddly then—his blue eyes twinkling as they shifted, ever so slightly, back and forth across her face. He stepped closer to her and his size and strength impressed her. She wondered, for a split second, how his rough, thick-fingered, fire-scarred hands would feel on her body. He licked his lips a second time and pain came onto his face.

He wanted to have her right there, she saw.

But giving herself up so easily was not suitable for a queen—nor did she think giving herself to Gendry, a lord used to having whatever he wanted, would work in her favor.

"Your looks disturb me, Lord Baratheon," she said, affecting modesty.

This time Gendry did not break into awkwardness.

He took another big gulp of his wine and said to her, "You know what you want. But I'll vote how I want. Nobody's gonna convince me or influence me."

His eyes flickered—not with lust but with something softer, something tender and too self-aware. Then he put on the formality that fit him so awkwardly and told her, "A very pleasant talk with you, Lady Stark. I must be getting to my meeting with the Prince of Dorne. Good morrow."

And she put on her most plaintive, beseeching look a second time. It was a look that had worked, if only once, on the ice-cold Roose Bolton.

"Good morrow, Gendry," she said in a delicate, feminine voice.

His big hands balled into fists, and his jaw clenched, and his eyes flared with passion.

He swallowed and said, in a half-hoarse voice. "Good… Good morrow, Lady… Sansa."


	7. Chapter 7

The day of the Great Council arrived. It was to be held in a royal gardens on a small promontory into the ocean. The promontory had a long narrow neck and a wider head out in the ocean with steep sides. Across the neck was a stone wall and gate that prevented unwanted people from getting into the gardens. During the Council, gold cloaks would watch the gate and keep an eye out on the ocean on the opposite side. Hence, privacy and security were both provided.

The Council would start when the sun was halfway been the horizon and its highest point of noon; it would continue until dusk and then begin again the next day for however many days needed. The prior Great Council, to choose Bran as King, had needed less than a day. No one knew how long this one would take, though most thought it would need much longer than Bran's had.

Sansa's handmaiden woke her before dawn, so they had to prepare the Queen of the North to appear in royal splendor. She was to promenade through the city on foot to the royal garden. The other lords and ladies of Westeros and a few dignitaries from across the Narrow Sea would do the same.

Every man, woman, and child in the city would line the streets and crowd balconies to watch, for it was to be a grand spectacle, perhaps the grandest of their lives. A decade before, when the elite of Westeros had come together to choose Bran, the city had been in ruin, and the lands wasted by war. Then, even the noblest and richest could not wear such fine garments and drive such splendid carriages as they now did.

The procession went as anticipated; everyone cheered for Sansa and the other lords, ladies, and various representatives. Electing Bran had been wonderful the city, the people, and all of Westeros, so the population were welcomed another such Council and hoped the next king would be as well chosen. There were still many among the masses gathered there, after all, who had survived so much terror: Daenerys burning half the city to the ground and letting her Dothraki loot and rape; Cersei destroying their beloved sept; Joffrey letting the people starve and calling for their heads when they expressed their hunger; the slow decay and increasing corruption under drunken King Robert; and even the rages of the Mad King.

For the Mad King had been sitting on the Iron Throne not forty years ago, hard to believe as that seemed. Those who had more than a few gray hairs could remember his reign from their childhood; those with white hair knew what it was to live as an adult in his reign.

Sansa and her entourage turned a corner and spotted the gate to the royal garden behind a swarm of shoving, shouting, and angry people. There were easily a thousand people there jostling and bellowing cursewords. The gate itself rose on the far side of the swarm, an arch of red stone five times as high as a man but wide enough only for one carriage, with a grill of black iron across its center.

She wondered how the other high lords had gotten in, and looking around, she saw that a few had not. Some of the crowd were townsfolk, but more were other entourages like her own. There were dark Dornishmen in their bright clothes, Lannister soldiers in black and gold plate armor, bearded Ironborn with faces weathered from the ocean, merchant lords clad in cyan silks from across the Narrow Sea, a group of maesters with long chains of many metals, a few wildlings with red beards and fur clothes, and many others from places Sansa could not name.

Sansa's guards, clad in House Stark's dark armor, tried to shove towards the gate and clear a path for her, but the guards of dozens of other dignitaries were doing the same.

"Make way for the Queen of the North!" shouted her guard captain.

"Make way for the Queen of the Iron Islands!" bellowed a barrel-chested Ironborn.

"Representatives of the Iron Bank must pass!"

And twenty other similar shouts went up again and again. The air became one great garbled roar of voices, cut only by the metallic clank of guards' plate mail bumping against other guards' brigantine or ringmail or weapons.

Sansa's guards were strong northern men, but they were used to fighting in open fields in the free, clean North. The crush and bustle of the city frustrated them, and the stink of so many unwashed bodies massed together made one of Sansa's younger guards vomit on the cobblestones. He'd smelled nothing half so foul in the vast, half-wild North. Sansa, who had smelled such things when she lived in the capital, kept her breakfast down.

Her guards finally pushed her through the crowd and up to the high gate. A few dozen gold cloaks flanked the gate, keeping their eyes open for anyone who might try to scale the garden wall. Inside the high arch, blocking a door-sized opening in the black iron grill, stood two men in the golden-brown, embossed plate armor of the Kingsguard.

Sansa strode right up to them, expecting them to step aside at once for a woman of her station and bearing. She'd nearly walked face-first into their polished breastplates before she realized they would not let her pass.

"I am Sansa Stark, Queen of the North," she declared. "Sister of the late King. These are my servants. We will enter."

"Papers," said one of the Kingsguard. He was a towering bear of a man with a gruff voice, a strangely thick neck, and a pudgy face free of scars. "We must see the royal seal or the seal of a Small Council member for you to enter."

"You misunderstand me, sir. I am Queen of the North of Westeros."

He raised his brow. "You said that already."

"Sir, you do not seem to understand. I am sister to the deceased king."

"And I'm Aegon Targaryen. Where's your papers?"

Sansa drew to her full height and raised her chin. "Such effrontery. And I can tell from your tone that you're of low birth. How could my brother have appointed you to be on the Kingsguard when you've no notion of how to treat royalty?"

"He appointed me," said the offended knight, folding his armored forearms across his breastplate with a clank, "because he saw in his magic dreams or what have you that I was a damn good fighter and would always be loyal. And he saw too that I'd always follow orders. And orders are, you need papers."

"Yes, it seems my brother must've appointed you for fighting capabilities and not wits. Do you not see the Stark wolf embroidered on my raiment? Do you not recognize this stitching? My brother would have had the same stitching on our house clothing, clothing you would've seen him wear many times in his service. It was made for him in Winterfell by a family of tailors and embroiderers who've served our House for a hundred years."

The big Kingsguard looked at Sansa's beautiful dress—a silver-blue one of finest damask with Stark direwolves stitched in gray all across its surface. Their eyes were tiny rubies, and gold lace trimmed the collar.

"Me mum could stitch that," he said.

His partner, who had been silent the whole time, grabbed the big man's shoulder. "We're gonna have to check on that."

"Send one of the gold cloaks to do it."

The big Kingsguard yelled and a gold cloak came up. "Go find Lord Highgarden," the big man said. "Ask him if a tall red-haired woman claiming to be Sansa Stark can enter."

Sansa wanted to upbraid this impudent Kingsguard. He did not know his place and shouldn't refer to a highborn in such a way. However, she bit her tongue. It wouldn't help, and she'd just picked up a piece of information that might be crucial: the soldiers securing the Great Council, both gold cloaks and Kingsguard, were reporting to "Lord Highgarden".

Who was Bronn.

Sansa pondered this. The quieter of the two Kingsguard said to her, "M'lady, this will take some time. You're welcome to wait to the side of the gate."

The Kingsguard gestured to one side, and Sansa recalled that there was a huge line of people behind her still struggling to gain entrance to the garden.

She stepped aside and her eyes fell on a man who stole her breath and made all the tiny muscles in her body squeeze tight for one thrilling second.

He was taller than her by six or eight inches, long-limbed and lean, standing easily with his back to the wall and looking out over the crowd. His face, angled slightly away from her, was chiseled with high cheekbones and a long, sharp jaw. Silky brown hair tumbled from his beautiful face down to his shoulders.

The whole way the man held himself was hopelessly confident. She'd never seen someone so cool, so self-possessed, so calm and yet at the same time radiating power and a sense of danger.

He wore a black shirt stitched with dazzling gold in tiny arabesques. The shirt's carefully tailored fit and pattern both made his waist seem thin but his shoulders look broader than the big Kingsguard's. He had a summer's tan on his large hands and his face, and it made him look exotic and striking beside all the pale winter faces around him.

More fascinating than any of that, though, were his eyes.

They were a darker shade of blue than she'd known eyes could be, deep and enchanting as the ocean, and they glimmered with cunning and excitement. What might this man be thinking that made his eyes sparkle in such a way?

He turned and looked right at her.

Something Sansa had never felt swept through the deepest parts of her body. It felt like hot honey flowed from the pit of her stomach through her loins in one great wave. Her insides clenched together, and she had to hold onto the red stone wall beside her for a moment.

But she didn't take her eyes off the mysterious, beautiful man as she felt this. He was staring right back at her, wearing a cocky smile that said he knew exactly the effect he'd had.

He took one step toward her and then Sansa had to glance away. The feelings in her body were overwhelming. For a moment, she forgot where she was and who she was. With that deliberate, knowing look and that decisive step towards her, he'd burned down all her queenly defenses: he'd turned her into nothing more than a lonely, aging woman who ached for the right man's touch.

But the Great Council would start at any moment. She must have her wits about her and her strength as well. For she'd have to stay the whole day—listening to every word, studying every gesture made. Then she'd read between the lines and determine the true relationships and alliances between the most powerful people in Westeros. That was what one had to do to stay ahead of any plots or sudden twists.

And yet here was this man who had thrown her mind and body into such tumult…

She looked up again, hoping he'd disappeared.

No, he was standing right before her, still wearing that cocksure smile.

He took one step closer, and her two bodyguards and servant rushed forward to stop him. He halted just before they had to restrain him. As he stopped, standing about four feet from Sansa, his fascinating eyes scanned her guards' armor and weapons.

"Lady Sansa Stark," he said, returning those magical eyes to hers. His voice was deep with a hint of melody, but what struck her most was his accent. She'd never heard anything like it. Her name sounded delectable when he said it. "The woman who made the Seven Kingdoms, Six.

There was a light, fluttering sense in her chest, and her whole body crawled with heat even though it was winter and she stood in the shade.

"I.. thank you," she said, not knowing why. "And who is it that I have the honor of addressing?"

"There's no honor involved with me, I'm afraid." He looked right at her with his inscrutable but beautiful eyes. "I'm a man of passion, of death, of contracts. And of discretion. Honor, I've never found so interesting or useful. But my name is Daario Naharis."

He set the syllables of his name neatly atop the pre-council din, not raising his voice any more than he had to. Then he paused and waited for her to reply. He knew what this name would mean to anyone who stayed informed about the world.

"The mercenary commander," said Sansa, recalling the details that went with the name. "You were under the Dragon Queen. You ruled in her stead."

"I did. But I was a better mercenary than a ruler, and I rule no more. I left the eastern cities in more capable hands."

Sansa liked his modesty, though she didn't quite believe it. It was rumored that he'd been the Dragon Queen's lover.

"More capable hands?" she asked with an archly raised brow. "Many hands, it would seem. They say no one can rule any of the cities for more than six months."

"Do they?" he asked. He stepped forward half a foot, somehow knowing exactly how close her guards would let him go. "They also say that the Queen of the North looks more beautiful now than she did when she was only a princess."

"It would seem we shouldn't put much trust into what 'they' say."

"On the contrary, now that I see you, I trust them more and more."


	8. Chapter 8

Her heart beat faster, though she knew better than to think much of his words. This man was no more than a clever flatterer trying to get close to a woman of power.

The problem was, when he'd looked at her like that, he'd woken something in her that didn't care about his motives, his character, or his low birth. He'd touched a part of her that paid as much attention to those things as a starving wolf would.

Or a wolf in heat.

"What do you see that makes you trust them?" she asked. It was a daft question and unsuitable for a Queen, but she couldn't help her curiosity about what this man would say next.

"I see eyes of sparkling ice that make diamonds look dull. I see skin so white and soft it makes fresh snow look like black iron dross. I see elegance that makes other queens seem crass and lips so richly soft they make roses seem all thorns."

"And I hear a man who spins words like a master weaver and builds sentences like a sept mason," she said with a controlled smile, "though I wonder whether such a flatterer could ever be much good as a mercenary."

He shrugged. "A reasonable wonder. I wonder whether such compliments were too extravagant for a woman with white hairs creeping into her auburn."

The skin on Sansa's face drew tight as a drumtop. Ice-cold shot through her chest and stomach. She was mortified, humiliated. This presumptuous man—a commoner!

He could not say such things to her! Certainly not in public!

Her mouth hung open in shock. Just as she went to upbraid his insolence, he added in a cruelly teasing voice, "I don't wonder too much, however. Everything I said was true."

His eyes held hers; the cheerful shine in them told her he'd meant it as a tease and a way to have fun. At the same time, it was clear that in the game of words he could play rough.

"Your insolence betrays your poor character," she said haughtily, having collected her wits. "For someone of your rank to speak to a Queen at all is unusual. It would behoove you to be more grateful for the privilege."

"My apologies," he said. He wore the tiniest smile, a cunning one that she found devilishly attractive but far too clever for comfort. "Not only are you far above my rank, but you've already attracted the romantic attentions of a high lord with whom I could never presume to compete. Of course I would never have any such interest in you, nor pay you any such attentions, nor would you have any such interest in me. Clearly, of course. But I would hate for your love emergent, Lord Baratheon, to think it amiss that I court you."

She laughed out of awkwardness. "There is no particular love of that sort between myself and Lord Baratheon. Our fathers were great friends, as you would know were you from Westeros. Our relationship is that of families long in friendship and of leaders of realms."

"Then it's especially romantic for you two to be together." He still wore that tiny hooked smile. "It must be easy for you to feel strongly about him."

He was mocking her again, but she did not take offense. "There is no romance, I assure you."

He glanced at her lips and shrugged. "You are too coy, my Queen."

She liked hearing him call her that in his foreign voice. It made her feel both powerful and desired. It should've bothered her that he'd once courted the Dragon Queen in with those same words said in that same way.

But it didn't.

"I should think there's plenty of romance," he said, his voice so husky and low that she could barely hear over the din, "between you and him. Perhaps even passion. A man so tall, so strong, so powerful. It would be natural for a woman to feel far more than romance about a man like that. She might even be unable to stop such feelings and urges, even at inappropriate times. Such as when he looks at her in the street."

Sansa laughed. "You speak too boldly, and assume too much. Lord Baratheon is a family friend. I respect and admire him."

Daario cocked his head at her. "The first outright lie you've told this conversation."

"I never lie," she said loudly, and she stepped back towards her guards.

"Except when you repeat to others a lie you've already told yourself," said Daario. "Same as anyone."

Daario captivated her. His teasing ways and that hooked smile drew her in, and she had to wonder what he'd done with the Queen of Dragons that made her leave control over western Essos to him alone.

But the Great Council would be starting at any moment. She shouldn't be seen talking to such a character, and though he interested her, she could have no serious interest in such a smooth-talking seducer, attractive as Daario might be.

"I must be going," she said firmly, and she turned to leave.

When she'd gone two steps, Daario said, "I was in the North."

Sansa paid no heed to this. Some mercenary paying a visit to her lands was not of urgent concern to the queen. He was a merchant in some ways, and aside from paying a few taxes, merchants were free to move about her lands and trade. She moved toward the gate, sure the guards were ready for her to enter by now.

"I saw the Manderleys," Daario said, raising his voice so that she could hear him as she moved further away.

Hearing the name of the North's wealthiest family made Sansa turn back to him.

"The Manderleys?" she asked. "What was your business with my bannerman?"

Daario turned his ear to her. It was still quite loud in front of the gate. He stood there, saying nothing more, forcing her to either yell out their business or take a few steps closer to him. She chose the second.

"What was your business with them?" she asked, drawing closer though not so close as before. "I will protect my bannermen with all my strength. They have no need for mercenaries."

"No, they did not," said Daario with a cunning smile. "Their captain was in the Eerie on business when I was there. He asked me to see his lord. An issue with pirates attacking ships out of White Harbor. Common enough in winter, when grain is precious. I'm afraid I'm not in the business of providing or training sailors. But you have a lovely city there, White Harbor."

He took a step closer to her. Sansa let him. They were close enough now to touch. She glanced at his hands—long-fingered, nails well-trimmed, held at ease by his side and never shaking or twitching. Those hands were elegant but deadly—and undoubtedly skilled in other areas, too.

"Who else have you talked to in the Six Kingdoms?" she asked, thinking to use his seeming interest to fish something out.

"Many lords having trouble with bandits," said Daario. "Of course they're not really having trouble with bandits. They're having trouble with their rank and file troops from the far reaches of their realms. Those troops know the bandits, are kin to some of the bandits, and will never try too hard to track down their cousins or uncles or in-laws for taking a bit of extra food from the grain caravans in hungry times. Nothing I can do. Training their men would do nothing to solve the problem, and if I provided men, my men would be killing the locals over bits of grain. Wouldn't take much more to turn the locals against them at that point."

"It's all about grain," mused Sansa, thinking again of that horrible story from her childhood with the chawed-up bones.

"Indeed. I did reach an agreement with one Westerosi Lord. He was ready to pay a high price for additional protection he could trust. He's purchasing up any extra grain he can, hoarding it, not giving much out to his people. I expect him to wait for sharp hunger to cause a sharper rise in prices."

Sansa was always forthright with her vassals and smallfolk about grain allotments. "What type of Lord would do such a thing to his people?"

"A smart one."

She saw the baseness in Daario. Her lip curled at him.

"He wouldn't necessarily have to do anything to his own people," he told her, seeing her reaction. For a moment, he looked out over the crowd. He was quite tall and could see over plenty of heads. "He could be fair with his own smallfolk and nobles, selling extra grain to less responsible lords with their own people. Not that it matters to me if he means to do it that way. Immense profit, regardless, as long as winter lasts at least another year."

It well might, Sansa thought. It was warmer here than in the North, but still below freezing every night, and the ground was dry and all plants were dead save for a few hardy evergreens planted in the royal gardens to keep them beautiful in just such a time.

Sansa put on a cute smile, as deliberate as what she'd used on Gendry. "Which Southern Lord was that?"

Daario blinked at her, seeing her intent and finding it too simple and therefore disagreeable. "Secrecy was part of the deal, Lady Stark. I cannot tell you which Southern Lord it was."

She saw her smile had done its job: distraction from the nature of her question.

"No, you cannot," she said, flattening her lips. "But you did just tell me it was a Southern Lord, and not someone in my own realm. I must know these things in such desperate times; I cannot have any of my lords hoarding grain. You've been to the North, after all."

His eyes narrowed and he licked his lips. It was a small lick, unintentional but showing his thoughts and feelings all the more for being so.

"I like women who are clever," he said without sarcasm. "And I like women who are powerful. The Manderleys said you were both, but from that coquette's smile, I'd thought they were wrong. You were one step ahead of me."

"Or two."

She felt powerful at that moment, and with that feeling came the other sensation that had accompanied Daario's first look—heat seeping through her body, making her garments feel too restrictive. Those two feelings together emboldened her.

"Perhaps you should come to the North and consult with me," she put out. "You might examine my troops and our protection of our overland grain routes."

He took one step closer, moving so quickly and nimbly it startled her. He was close enough for her to feel his breath on her face. Her guards grabbed their sword hilts but when he halted just short of her and made no move, they did not draw their weapons.

"I'd like that very much," he told her.

His words were so low that she could scarcely hear them over the chattering crowds around them, and no one further away would know what he said. His closeness and something about the way he spoke made her long legs rub slightly together. His eyes fascinated her, and his pink-brown lips were less than a foot from hers. How would such a cocky warrior and smooth talker kiss?

Incredibly well, she expected.

She'd had so few good kisses in her life—the forced marriages, the torture and abuse, the long period of being alone and a queen.

He leaned in just a half inch closer and said, "I know that you'd like it, too. I was there yesterday, when the Northern Storm started. It looked like the lightning only struck Gendry Baratheon to me. You were unimpressed. He's not on your level and you know it. I respect you. I expect you'll play him like the pawn he is, like the queen you are."

She raised her eyes and gave him her coldest stare. "Step away from me!" she shouted, and her guards rushed forward. Daario jumped nimbly back. A knife appeared in his hand, a simple one with a shiny steel blade and a handle of worn leather.

"Calling in the guards because of too much truth," mocked Daario. "The move of an enlightened monarch."

"I called my guards," Sansa told him, "because you are a common ruffian, and it only took me a minute to realize it due to your ability to take the airs of those of higher birth. You may have served the Dragon Queen, but that will win you no friends in Westeros. Nor can leadership of cities across the Sea change your low upbringing and crass mercantilism. Good day."

Daario shrugged and slid his knife slowly back into its sheath, a black one that blended well with his outfit. "Good day to you, my Queen."

She couldn't deny that she still liked the way that sounded from him: my Queen. It was the courteous thing to say, but in how he said it, there was irony and a darker suggestiveness. From Daario, those two words were somehow worshipful yet dirty, servile yet masterly, sexual yet polite.

A moment later, the smaller, more polite of the two Kingsguard approached her.

"My apologies, My Lady," said the Kingsguard, bowing low. "We were told last night that those from the Great Houses did not require papers. We took this to mean the Great Houses of the Six Kingdoms, not the Great Houses of Westeros."

"I am a Tully as well as a Stark," said Sansa, "being a sister of the former King, who was a Tully and Stark himself. Thus I fall under both categories. But your mistake is forgiven. Take me to the Council."


End file.
